Surviving Suicide - How I Survived

My previous post about my experience with suicide would be for naught and completely self-serving if I didn't share with you exactly HOW I survived suicide. I mentioned that following my hospitalization, I was placed on medication and had psychiatric and psychological help. Yes, it did help, but I believe a combination of factors came to help me enjoy life.

Of course, each person has their own thought processes, their own environments, families, emotions and situations. And each person has their own strengths and weaknesses, so this entire combination of factors and "ah ha" moments, to quote Ms. Winfrey, may not work for everyone, but just one on its own may be motivation enough, I believe, to kick start a process of healing.

1. ACCEPT
Accept help. Accept that you even need help.
Accept that, yeah, you made bad decisions, horrible decisions, but accept that every ying has a yang.
Accept that someone might love you, and if someone reaches out to you from concern, whether they fit your ideal picture of a Prince in Shining Armor or not, they probably love you and that's worth something. (They might even be in the shape of your mother and father.)
Accept that you have feelings that suck. Feelings that hurt and that aren't pleasurable. Allow them to be.
Cause the secret is: they pass. In the moment, anxiety, anger, fear, pain, hurt, those feelings seem unbearable. But they pass. You're mind IS able to adapt and calm down.

2. ALLOW YOURSELF TO FEEL GOOD EMOTIONS
And don't immediately think about how it's going to suck when the rush of happiness is going to wear off. Cause then, poof, happiness will be gone and, well... there ya go.
When the smallest glint of happiness happens on its own, a beautiful little event that happened without whatever crutch you needed, whether it's cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, calling that person just one more time, eating that extra donut, pounding that wall, when the happiness hits you in the chest, shut up. Stop thinking. Just stop. Feel it. It's awesome. I love that moment.

3. MAKE THOSE GLINTS OF HAPPINESS LAST LONGER AND MORE OFTEN
Again, if you accept that your happy, no matter why or how, and you make it last longer and stay with it, it will become easier to come by and it'll feel like it'll last longer. And you already know how to do that, cause you've been doing great with holding onto to shitty feelings. Try it.

4. GET OUT OF THE SITUATIONS THAT ALLOW PAIN TO GROW
In my case, that was getting out of a bad relationship, finally quitting my extremely stressful job and stopping to beat myself up about my past. The day I broke down in front of my former office and realized I couldn't stay there anymore was great. But what felt even better was biting the bullet and setting up job interviews and saying "I quit." Today, I honestly have the best job I could have ever dreamed of. And what's funny, is that my employer hadn't originally hired me to do what I do now. Over time, he saw what my passion was and I allowed myself to take on the challenge. (That was a bigger chunk of happy that felt great and I stewed in for a while.) I've been with my new employer for a while now, and I've been turning down job offers. Yeah. Dude. I know.

5. LET LIFE HAPPEN
Sit back. Relax. Enjoy the show. We all love stories, the twists and the turns and the leaps of faith. We all scream at the TV when we see game show contestants bite their lips when faced with the decision to take a risk. DO IT!!! So why don't we treat ourselves the same way? You've been meaning to start singing again? Do it! (That was one of my secret passions. When I finally said, ok, I'll do it, at the age of 25, well... let's just say 6 years later I have recorded 3 albums, shot music videos, performed shows and collaborated. Feels great to see my accomplishments no matter how few people actually heard or saw me. It fffeeeeelllsss gggooooddddd.)

You also have to accept that shitty stuff IS going to happen. Bad news, accidents, loss, pain. Don't freak out when it does, it's life. Life doesn't go the way you plan it to. Never. Okay, sometimes. But the point isn't to stick your stiff view and life plan. Chong said it best. Go with the flow, man. Be like water and find a new path around the obstacle. Creative Solution Based Thinking if you'd like to use big terms. Or rather, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for the psych term. Learning to develop coping mechanisms. They should teach it in schools. It's crazy how you learn weird and harmful ways of dealing with stuff that sucks. Kids used to laugh at me all the time, for my appearance, over eagerness and all that. So I tried giving them stuff like candies and pencils to like me better. Where the hell did I get THAT idea?! Cute, but not when you're 14. Never knew that they were basically picking something about me and exaggerating it because, well, they feared that problem or thing, too. So it's funny. I could've been compassionate and brushed it off. Oh, the things we learn (or refuse to hear when your young.)

6. HAVE CONFIDENCE THAT YOU DO KNOW HOW TO MAKE GOOD DECISIONS AND GO FOR IT
The day I stopped kicking myself and expecting to make bad decisions and just let myself live, things changed. I changed. Good happened. (And then I allowed myself to bask in that, too... you know, cause it felt good.)

And when it comes to love. Love... that thing we all crave.

They say you need to love yourself before you can let someone love you back. Yeah, okay. I'm getting married in love because I accepted that someone thought I was worthy, even loved the way I look (every day I didn't wear those ripped sweatpants) and I let him love me. Now, we both help each other get those little and big poofs of happiness as often as possible. His love does help propel me to be a better me, I said that in a previous post, but I think I get better when I propel him to be a better him, help him reach his goals, tell him I think he's worth it. Quid pro quo, baby. Works both ways.

Anways, that's enough for long posts. Letting yourself be helped was the first step for me. From then on it was Oooh's and Aaaah's and Now-I-Gets-It. (And, in my case, reading and informing myself on depression and anxiety, both medical and spiritual - Eckhart Tolle, Jill Bolte Taylor and Deepak Chopra had profound effects on my psyche.)

I look forward to more and more poofs of happiness and now know how to work with the less happy stuff.